Monthly Archives: July 2013

Chateau Heartiste from the man-o-sphere has a recent post about the dramatic decline in marriage rates over the past century. According to research from National Center for Family and Marriage Research of Bowling Green State University:

…the U.S. marriage rate is 31.1, the lowest it’s been in over a century. That equals roughly 31 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women. Compare that to 1920, when the marriage rate was a staggering 92.3.

For the women that do decide to get married, the average age of their first marriage is almost 27 years. From the study:

Furthermore, a woman’s average age at first marriage is the highest it’s been in over a century, at nearly 27 years old.

For an American man looking for a wife, this is bleak news if these trends continue. I would argue that the numbers already paint a bleak picture. This is very relevant to those of us seeking Russian women (RW) for marriage. It shows that we’re not completely crazy. One of the reasons I tell people about why I search for a RW is simply because American women (AW) simply don’t want to get married, but nobody believes this reason. Now there’s data proving it.

The authors cite a politically correct reason: that marriage is now one of many options available to couples such as cohabitation. But this is nonsense. It has more to do with the noncommittal nature of AW. I’ve witnessed it first hand. Very few women are even considering marriage until after they get their college degrees and been in the market for a few years. That’s if they even think of it at all. Many AW assume that it will follow some romantic comedy script and a suitor will simply plop in their lap.

I’d expect that there will still be some denial over this dramatic, sociological change. The more astute observers would ask what is driving this change? And it often comes down to it being the men’s fault. We’re either afraid of commitment or we aren’t manning up and taking responsibility. Denial is a powerful force, isn’t it? Or perhaps men are noticing that marriage doesn’t seem to be on woman’s minds anymore so why try. AW are occupied by their careers and living the Sex and the City lifestyle. I suppose they don’t object to being married eventually after they have their fun and settle down, but by that time, they have a 500 point checklist and hooked up and slept with dozens of men. You don’t think these factors aren’t driving the decline of marriage?

AW will still be in denial over this and say they want to get married but simply haven’t found the right guy. Sorry ladies, if you were really serious about getting married–if you’re really making it a priority–you’d have realized that time is not on your side in regards to your looks and fertility; the only two things that matter to a man who’s serious about marriage. You’d be starting your husband search as soon as you graduated high school. You also wouldn’t let yourselves get more and more obese. You’d be dressing nicer and wearing more makeup. You would put the word out to your friends that you were in the marriage market and not let them sabotage your chances. You’d also be mentioning in your online profiles on Match, eHarmony or even Facebook, that you’re looking for a husband. But you aren’t. You’re hooking up while watching life go by.

To be fair, Russia might be following the same trend. Marriage rates in Russia have started to decline while the average age of marriage seems to be increasing, but it’s still in the beginning stages and it may take nearly a generation for it to get as bad as it has in the US. The USSR seems to have adhered to the traditional family unit while feminism was taking root in the US so Russia may have simply gotten a late start. It’s a matter of speculation as to how long it will take for Russia to catch up to the west or will there be unique cultural influences that moderate the change? Time will tell. But for the American man who wants to get married, it would help his chances if he looked for women that actually want to get married and made that goal a priority. That’s why he considers RW.

Some agencies and other companies in the foreign, mail order bride (MOB) business host socials in the ladies’ home cities where men can take a trip to meet them in a public place to see if there’s a connection. It closely resembles a speed dating event in America, but a little more free-form and a higher ratio of women to men.

This is an interesting documentary about what happens in socials and gives a pretty good balanced presentation about what both the Ukrainian women and Western men expect and their impressions. Not all of it is positive or realistic.

As a disclaimer, I’ve never been to one of these events, but if I had to start my bride search over again, I would go to one of these. Experienced travelers think this is a ripoff because they are often hosted by unscrupulous MOB agencies and the women are only there for a good time and not serious about marrying a western man. All of this is true.

But what is valuable to a newbie who has just decided to do this is that this is a good opportunity to get his feet wet. He can plop down about $5000 and the agency takes care of everything. They arrange accommodation, transportation and translators to help you talk to the girls. They’ll help you arrange dates and meetings with the girls that you like the best.

For a Western man who might be intimidated about visiting a country to meet and date women on his own, socials may be a good idea to ease into the experience and to get acclimated to the culture and talking to the women. The idea being that you’ll have a good time conversing with beautiful women and you’ll have more confidence to explore and meet girls on your own on future trips. If the fairly large price tag bothers you, then you should rethink your decision about marrying a foreign woman. The whole process costs much more than that and you should be made aware of it.

Be careful about falling in love. Most of the bad you hear about the socials are true: very few women are serious at these things. You’re just on vacation, remember? So enjoy yourself!

When you tell your family and friends that you are seeking a Russian woman or any other foreign bride, you’re going to encounter some skepticism or outright hostility to the idea. You’ll probably hear the question, What’s wrong with American girls? Or something along those lines.

I can tell you how I handled this: I simply didn’t tell anybody! I’m going on vacation. That’s it! I encourage you to do the same thing I did for several reasons.

You are really just going on vacation — The fact that you’ve made initial contact with a RW, or more than one, and are going to visit them should mean very little to you. You’re simply going to visit their country to meet them and see if you’re compatible. While you’re there, you’re going to see the sites. You’re in a foreign country for God’s sake. Why wouldn’t you tour all the impressive and quaint monuments that countries erect to celebrate past glory? Going on vacation not only is a plausible reason to your family and friends, it puts you in the right frame of mind. Because unless you are a seasoned traveler, you won’t really know what you’re doing. First visits have a high failure rate and you are a fish out of water at this point. And if you invest too much emotionally at this stage, there will be too much pressure to succeed and you’ll be making a lot of dumb decisions. You don’t know how long a journey to a foreign country is unless you head back after striking out. Trust me on this; it sucks! Plus, your family and friends are going to heap scorn on you for coming back empty-handed. So you’re better off just telling everybody that you’re on vacation.

You’ll be fighting with every feminist — Just between you and me, we both know why you’re going to Russia: the American women (AW) just aren’t doing it for you. The sex you want, you’re not getting and the sex you’re getting you don’t want, right? This tends to revolve around two issues with AW: They’re getting fat or they’re feminist. Both kill boners in about 2 seconds. Plus, every AW will seize the opportunity to spew bile at you saying that AW aren’t really the problem, it’s you’re problem for having too many deficiencies. This is shades of blaming the victim or haters gonna hate and I’d rather not deal with it and neither should you.

Every time you come back alone, you’ll hear about it — When the common person thinks of mail order brides or RW, they think you just go and pick one up and bring her over here. You and I both know that this isn’t how it works. Your well-meaning friends and family simply don’t know what they’re talking about and you’ll have little success in trying to educate them. Take my word for it. People are fighting hard to stay ignorant. It actually takes much more time and patience and every time they see you without somebody, your family and friends will try and get you to give up the pursuit by reiterating that it’s a dumb idea and that they’re just after a green card if you do succeed.

So you’re just going on vacation, alright? Trust me on this one. One day when you succeed and bring the girl to the US on a spousal or fiance visa, you can tell people that you met at a nice coffee shop overlooking Red Square, or some other land mark, and it will seem so romantic for your family and friends to hear it. Especially the women; they’re into a lot of that fate, destiny and soul mate nonsense, so you’ll have to sell it that way to convince them that you and your foreign bride are the real deal. It’s easier to do this if they think you met on vacation rather than them thinking you meant for it to happen this way.

It’s only a matter of time before you start to correspond with Fat Yuri on your bride search. In fact, it will be sooner rather than later. So it is best to be aware of this now. In your mind, you think you might be corresponding with a girl like this:

But in reality, you are really corresponding with this guy:

He is known as Fat Yuri among those in the foreign bride seeking market and he wants your money.

I hate to burst your bubble but forces are conspiring against you to separate you from your money by exploiting your one weakness: your love of pretty girls! The internet is completely anonymous. It didn’t take long for some people to figure out that they can impersonate a foreign bride and start writing letters professing love for a hapless bride seeker for the purpose of getting money from him.

You might think that you’re too smart to fall for such a transparent scam, but don’t be so sure. The internet is full of men that have been scammed out of thousands of dollars because they really wanted to believe that the sexy girls in the photos they saw is who they are really writing to, and all they need to do is send $2000 via Western Union for visa and travel expenses and she’ll be arriving at his door and make him live happily ever after. Trust me, it’s tempting.

This scam works more often than you think because American men looking for Russian women (RW) have been conditioned by the marketing departments of many foreign bride and mail order bride (MOB) sites to believe that Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union is populated by super models who don’t care what you look like, how old you are or how much you make. They will love you, marry you, have children with you and live happily ever after. If you still don’t believe me, consider the millions of Americans who are willing to pay premium prices for organic fruits and vegetables despite studies repeatedly showing no tangible benefits to health or nutrition. Some of you might be ones who are buying organic and are rationalizing your decision or calling me a liar. That’s what happens when you let a corporation’s marketing department do your thinking for you; you get ripped off. Same thing with the MOB industry. Don’t let it happen!

Another factor is that we in the West are used to throwing money at problems to make them disappear. Also, if you’ve done some research in seeking MOB’s you might get an impression that it will cost a significant amount of money (which is true), most of which will go to covering her expenses while you date and decide to get married. So you figure sending her money for plane tickets and a visa is what is expected of you. It’s not! We have grown so accustomed to rising standards of living, decent wages and salaries and freedom that we’ve lost all critical thinking skills and common sense. A good rule of thumb is that if something seems to good to be true, then it probably is. A supermodel half a world away who doesn’t know you isn’t going to fall in love with you after three letters, nor is she going to leave everything behind to come to you. It’s not gonna happen!

Fat Yuri, knows the language of love and seduction very well and may convince you that he’s the woman you see in the pictures he’s sending you. So it may be worth going over a few red flags to set your compass in this endeavor. Keep in mind that red flags aren’t hard and fast rules, there are exceptions. But I’ve encountered Fat Yuri in my travels and so have others that have come before me so we’ve identified patterns of behavior that we were able to simplify into some tidbits of wisdom. It’s not perfect or exhaustive, but don’t use that as an excuse to ignore the advice entirely. Just keep your head up.

She doesn’t seem to be answering any of your questions— You’ve both been exchanging information about your lives and dreams, but it’s feeling generic and when you try to ask specific and unique questions she doesn’t answer them. It’s because Fat Yuri is using form letters and sending them to hundreds of men like you. Yuri can anticipate general questions like Where do you live? and What do you do? and try to incorporate answers to these common questions in the form letters, but he can’t anticipate everything so some questions will get missed and never answered.

She is sending a photo attached to every letter, even when you didn’t ask for one– If you ask for photos of the lady you are writing to, that’s one thing. Sending photos in the first letter is also very normal and expected. But as correspondence continues she is sending a photo with every letter. As time goes on, these photos may even be nudes or very sexually suggestive. This means that Yuri thinks he’s hooked you and he’s trying to reel you in. A genuine RW you never met certainly won’t send naked photos of herself. And besides her introductory letter, she won’t send any photos unless you ask for them. Don’t be too suspicious of photos that she took in a studio or photos of her wearing a bikini during her holiday trip to Egypt. These are pretty common. But I think you’ll recognize unusual photos when you see them.

She falls in love with you– You guys haven’t met yet and I doubt that you’re poetic enough to make her heart melt with your written word. In fact, if you tried professing your love after a few emails with her, a normal RW will think that you’re crazy. So why would you believe it when she does it? At the correspondence stage, you’re just exploring compatibility, nothing more. Save the love talk until after you had your first meeting in person, at least.

She asks you to send money– It hardly matters what it’s for, but any money request is immediately suspicious. It doesn’t matter if it’s for plane tickets to visit you, a sick grandmother (you’ll learn that Russia is full of “sick grandmothers”), she wants to take English lessons to communicate better with you, she needs to cover internet and translation costs, anything. If you have met her and your relationship has developed to a certain degree of closeness and intimacy then it’s perfectly natural to help her out within reason. But if you’re simply corresponding and she asks for money, it’s a red flag.

She addresses you by a different name— Don’t laugh! This has happened. Sometimes Fat Yuri forgets to change the name on the form letters he’s sending you. He’s probably hooked quite a few guys and is getting you all confused.

She’s much too attractive for you– I hate to break it to you, but if she looks like the type of woman who wouldn’t give you the time of day in America, then you probably won’t get very far with a woman like her in Russia either. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and correspond with her and see how far you get. There’s a kernel of truth in the claim that RW don’t place much emphasis on looks, but once she puts herself on an international dating site, she will quickly learn her market value in terms of male attention and the beauties will have options. Keep your expectations realistic!

These points will cover the most common ones. It isn’t an exhaustive list and some scams from Fat Yuri are a lot more subtle. It’s also not beneath a RW to perpetrate a scam herself and her scams will cost you much more in time and money because she’s an actual girl. Just keep your head on straight and your eyes open. If it’s too good to be true, it is!